Known from document EP 2,233,923 A1 is a characterization method and system of the aforementioned type. The described method aims to characterize the coagulation or sedimentation dynamics of a fluid containing blood. The system for implementing this method comprises a fluid chamber receiving liquid, a spatially coherent light source capable of emitting a lighting laser beam and a mirror for reflecting the laser beam toward the chamber. The laser beam extends in a longitudinal direction from the reflecting mirror toward the fluid chamber.
The system also comprises an image sensor, such as a matrix sensor of the CCD (Charged-Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) type, arranged to make it possible to acquire a temporal series of images of an optical granularity pattern created by the interaction between the particles contained in the chamber and the laser beam. The characterization system also comprises a processing unit for processing said temporal series of images.
The fluid chamber is positioned between the mirror and the image sensor in the longitudinal direction. The distance between the fluid chamber and the image sensor in the longitudinal direction is several centimeters or tens of centimeters. The laser beam emitted by the spatially coherent light source has a surface comprised between 10 μm2 and several mm2 along a plane perpendicular to the longitudinal direction and passing through the fluid chamber.
Such a system and method make it possible to effectively characterize the coagulation or sedimentation dynamics of the blood contained in the liquid.
However, such a system is relatively bulky. Furthermore, it makes it possible to observe the coagulation phenomenon only in a relatively small volume of the fluid chamber.